The Beef, Kind of…

Posted on March 23, 2011 by sensiblesmoker

Newsflash from the public health folks:  the life expectancy in the U.S. has gone up a little. Although our ranking is still abysmal compared to other developed countries, this is good news.

According to a variety of broadcast and print sources, a primary reason cited for the increased life expectancy has been – you guessed it – the decrease in the rate of tobacco smoking, which has been cut in half since 1965.

First of all, it’s nice to hear somebody say that the flexibility and suffering required to be a smoker in America today is a major contributor to some good end.

But the claim that the decrease in smoking rates is the major cause of the increase in U.S. life expectancy seems squirrely to me.

I’ve always heard that the biggest determinant of life expectancy on a country-wide scale is infant mortality, which explains our abysmal ranking among developed countries. Like it or not, in 2011 too many U.S. children are subjected to a substandard life both pre- and post-natally because their parents don’t have the money for decent nutrition, let alone reasonable quality medical care and daycare.

Not at all to dis those women who take care of five or six children in their house every day at lower cost – they’re among America’s most unsung heroes.

But on the increased-life-expectancy-due-to-decreased-smoking claim – remember when Taco Bell was accused of having only 35 percent actual meat in their “taco meat” filling?  35% – that’s got to be closer to the percentage the decrease in smoking may have had on our increased life expectancy. I’m probably still giving smoking – or the lack of it – way too much credit.

What can I say, I’m a generous guy.

There sure have been a lot of other changes since 1965 that I presume would have had a positive impact on U.S. life expectancy — like statin drugs, seatbelts, the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, and salad bars.

But let’s not be churlish – I’d like to applaud the aforementioned folks for finally admitting the positive effects upon public health of smoking cessation efforts thus far, even though by copping to something positive they had to risk blunting the effects of their usual fear-based messages (smoking is an insidious and persistent threat, improvement is not good enough, there is no safe level, etc.)

Good job, guys!

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Meanness is Contagious

Posted on March 8, 2011 by sensiblesmoker

Poor Wisconsin! In the budget cut/union busting battle, it seems like nobody has got an understanding word to spare about the desires of the other side. This seems un-Wisconsinite – the cheddar heads I know are kind and reasonable to a fault (if a tad un-ironic).

It’s an ugly disease – this uncaring objectifying the other side of a political/ideological debate. We’re used to meanness from Texas and Arizona – befitting the rattlesnakes that call those dry lands home. But Wisconsin is wet and verdant. Placid and cud-chewing. So where did this meanness come from?

Perhaps there were signs of this meanness when Wisconsin last year made it illegal to smoke tobacco in any hotel or motel room in the state. Basically this means that a tobacco-smoking person cannot rent a comfortable and safe indoor space, regardless of the weather or their personal circumstances.

It means that a family with young children whose grandparents are inveterate smokers has to lodge those grandparents in their house when the smokers come to visit.

It means that a business person who wants to show a property or project to an overseas investor who smokes has a needless temporary hurdle to mount, such as inviting the investor to stay with the business person and his family (see above).

It means that a homeless or traveling schizophrenic who medicates himself with nicotine cannot take shelter from the extremes of heat and cold for which the American Heartland is famous.

And for what? To know that you have taken a stand for good health? To know that no hotel worker is ever going to be exposed to even trace levels of tobacco smoke? To know that you have taken a strong stand – have a very public Zero Tolerance – for smoking tobacco? Because we all know tobacco smoke is that dangerous, don’t we? Doesn’t everyone know by now that there is no safe level of secondhand smoke?

About five years ago, a newcomer to my little Alaskan town stepped off the ferry and launched a “Clean Air” campaign at a time when the businesses in town were steadily going smoke-free anyway. He achieved an identity, a grant to live on and later a job as a quit-smoking counselor. He reminded me of the missionaries of yore who would step off the boat, take a look at the native people and say – “These people need (choose name of god and/or religion).

These missionaries went to great lengths to convince these native people that their souls were in danger and that a horrible future of eternal torment waited for them if they continued their profligate ways. These missionaries were willing to subject the native people to a harsh present, if the result was to rescue their immortal future.

And those who refused to repent were a contagion unto all the native people, and so it behooved everyone that the recalcitrant souls be cleansed or that they be made a public example of the wages of sin.

If you can accept that science is the religion of our time and replace the danger to the soul with the danger to the body, I think we’ve got a pretty good analogy.

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Celebrities Smoking #1 and #2

Posted on February 21, 2011 by sensiblesmoker

Good human story about Paul Haggis, the Academy Award winning writer and director of “Crash” and “The Next Three Days.” Here’s the quote:

Haggis felt the need for a cigarette, so we walked outside. He is ashamed of this habit, especially given that, in 2003, while directing “Crash,” he had a heart attack. After Haggis had emergency surgery, his doctor told him that it would be four or five months before he could work again: “It would be too much strain on your heart.” He replied, “Let me ask you how much stress you think I might be under as I’m sitting at home while another director is finishing my fucking film!” The doctor relented, but demanded that a nurse be on the set to monitor Haggis’s vital signs. Since then, Haggis has tried repeatedly to quit smoking. He had stopped before shooting “The Next Three Days,” but Russell Crowe was smoking, and that did him in. “There’s always a good excuse,” he admitted. Before his heart attack, he said, “I thought I was invincible.” He added, “I still do.”

That’s from an article by Lawrence Wright in the Feb.14 & 21 New Yorker (double issue)

Also, rare for me kudos to Speaker of the House John Boehner. When asked about his smoking in a TV interview at the end of January, he said (I paraphrase): “It’s legal. I like it. Get a life.”

Thank you, Mr. Speaker!

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The Authorities Who Cried Wolf

Posted on February 8, 2011 by sensiblesmoker

In the last few days, New York authorities have come closer to instituting an outdoor smoking ban in all parks, beaches and Times Square. (Is the most-visited tourist attraction in the country now “Square,” like beatnik “square,” Dobie Gillis “square” – ergo: uncool?) The city-wide ban is based on “scientific proof” that smokers smoking outdoors expose people in their vicinity and passersby to an unacceptable level of a deadly toxin.

And New York State authorities are not alone in bending over backwards to find a reason to ban the new electronic cigarettes — the “nicotine delivery devices” that some smokers are using as an alternative when smoking is disallowed —  despite the fact that the devices emit only water vapor. States and municipalities are re-writing laws to now ban the indoor use of electronic cigarettes. After all, if it looks like a duck smoking and satisfies like a smoking duck should, then it’s a smoking duck smoking!

Didn’t these folks ever read “The Boy Who Cried Wolf?” Really? Are they from Mars?

On the basis that they might be from Mars – and not to be an “Earthist” — (I’m sure there are places in the world where people haven’t heard the story) – let me encapsulate:

A boy has fun stirring up all the adults by yelling “Wolf!” although that is not true. So much fun, that he does it again and again, and delights as the geezers repeatedly freak out. To make a long story short, the geezers stop believing the boy, the real wolf shows up, the boy calls for help, no one comes and the wolf eats the boy.

The authorities are called “authorities” because they have credibility. That gives them a responsibility to be more rational than old coots with spaghetti strainers on their heads  endlessly adjusting the coat-hanger antennas on their TVs.

When a rational person is told that barbecuing indoors is fine, because it’s no more dangerous than barbecuing outdoors, the rational look for the colander on their friend’s head. But what if it’s the authorities making that claim? What is one to do with that many colanders?

Red sauce or white?

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